Bill Gates fund adds €22.5m to Ireland's Ecocem low-carbon mix     

Money will enable the company to seek approval from EU regulators to roll out its new formulation and build new plants

Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the €1.6bn fund led by Bill Gates, has confirmed it has invested in Irish company Ecocem, which has been developing low-carbon cement for more than two decades.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the $2bn (€1.6bn) fund led by Bill Gates, has confirmed it has invested in Irish company Ecocem, which has been developing low-carbon cement for more than two decades.

Breakthrough Energy and its European arm invested €22.5m in Ecocem. The money will enable the company to seek approval from EU regulators to roll out its new formulation. 

It will also go toward building xsew plants outside the region, which would help prove to larger cement companies that its lower-carbon formulation can be made in different parts of the world. 

Breakthrough's investors include Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Michael Bloomberg. 

Ecocem Materials is tackling a particularly intractable problem when it comes to lowering greenhouse gases emissions. Producing cement contributes as much as 8% of global carbon pollution. Manufacturing plants can last for five decades or more, meaning new technologies enter the market very slowly. 

Emissions from cement

The vast majority of emissions from cement are linked to the production of clinker – a binding agent that can make up as much as 70% of the final product. 

Clinker is made by heating limestone in a hot kiln along with clay, an energy-intensive process that generates large amounts of carbon dioxide even if fossil fuels aren’t used. 

To address the problem, Ecocem has sold slag as a part replacement for clinker since the company was founded in 2000. 

The byproduct of steel production that has similar chemical properties to clinker and putting that waste to use is better for the environment. 

• Bloomberg